Hasbro's Star Wars brand team have agreed to answer three questions from Jedi Insider fans on a regular basis. However the questions for this latest Q&A had to be sent into the folks at Hasbro right before
Toy Fair. Since we figured any type of specific product question we could have come up with at the time would likely be answered at
Toy Fair, we decided to go with a more general type question for this round.
JI: With all the cool new things we see each week appear in the Clone Wars animated series, how does Hasbro go about picking what gets made into toys and what doesn't from the show? Can you walk us through the process of how something is selected and then the steps of getting it made from cartoon to toy and then on to my shelf?
Hasbro: The process isn't all that tough - we read the scripts as soon as Lucasfilm makes them available to us, usually 12-18 months before an episode is set to air. From that, we will make our main character selections according to prominence of characters within the story arc. The myriad background characters don't show up in the scripts, so it really helps us focus down on the core heroes and villains of the story-which is key since our total item count that we can put into the assortment is very tightly controlled. With episodes coming fast and furious, we really do need to be selective in getting the main new character introductions into the lineup, and synched up as much as we can to the order in which episodes will be aired. It will not be until much later that we see visuals, and even later until we see completed or near-complete episodes. Seeing episodes helps everything come together and sometimes based on that we will decide to "chase" a character or vehicle that we did not have in the line the first time. From there, you can pretty much pick up the store from the recent edition of Star Wars Insider which details how figures are created from the original art inputs.
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